Wastewater pond treatment systems are a well known method of treating wastewater produced by domestic and industrial sources. These systems have the advantages of the low cost of pond construction and minimum maintenance needs in comparison to other facilities used to treat wastewater. Pond treatment systems do have the disadvantages of requiting substantial amounts of land and, preferably, somewhat isolated areas for their use. Consequently, they have been favored in rural areas were land is less expensive and where the population is not as dense as is found in more urbanized areas.
These systems also have the disadvantage of being rather quickly outdated in terms of their capacity as the surrounding population grows. That is, existing pond treatment systems cannot, as a rule, be readily changed to accommodate population and industrial increases in the geographic area utilizing the system. As the population grows, more water is used that must be handled by the treatment system. In addition, new industry places further burdens on the treatment system since industry is typically a large source of wastewater that must be treated. An additional side effect of population growth is that the hard surfacing of the geographic area feeding into a wastewater treatment system increases, thereby decreasing the available am for rain water to be absorbed and increasing the storm sewer runoff. Ideally all storm water flows should be separated from the sanitary sewers. In actual practice some storm water flows will remain, thereby resulting in higher peak flows when combined with the sanitary sewers. A further problem faced by all sewage treatment facilities is the necessity of adapting to ever-changing government regulations concerning the level of treatment that must be provided. Seldom, if ever, do the regulations change to become less strict, thereby allowing the discharge of water having a reduced mount of treatment.
Solving the problem of increasing need for wastewater treatment capacity is seldom inexpensive or free of political ramifications and can involve costly, time-delaying litigation over the proposed solution. Expansion of those existing systems by construction of additional ponds is at times neither practical due to the surrounding terrain, the cost involved in the expansion--which may constitute only a short term solution to a long term anticipated population increase, and/or the local political opposition to the construction of additional ponds for treatment of the increased wastewater. The construction of entirely new facilities is also often neither financially or politically palatable. Existing wastewater pond treatment systems are thus often expected to perform beyond design specifications to the disadvantage of those downstream that must bear with the perhaps less than fully treated wastewater.
It would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for increasing the capacity of existing wastewater pond treatment systems that could do so without significant construction costs and that would enable the complete and ready treatment of excess storm sewer water as well as domestic and industrial wastewater.